1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to apparatuses and methods for image processing. In particular, the invention relates to a method and an apparatus for image processing in which contour points are determined from the image data and a segmentation process is carried out on the basis of the contour points, during which associated contour points are combined to form objects for further processing.
2. Description of Related Art
Nowadays, image processing systems are used in order to achieve automatic object identification for widely different technical applications. By way of example, industrial robots are frequently oriented on the basis of processed image data, allowing a robot to identify an object and its orientation and position. In order to ensure reliable identification of objects, a large amount of “a priori” knowledge about the object to be identified has, however, been required until now. This often involves the creation of specifically tailor-made software solutions for the respective technical field of operation. A procedure such as this is obviously highly complex and correspondingly expensive. In addition, technical implementation in this case often also includes tedious learning processes, by means of which the system is trained to identify selected objects.
A further problem is that memory-intensive and complicated calculations are required for image identification. Real-time identification is therefore virtually impossible to achieve in this way.